


The Idiosyncratic Lodger

by Kate_Lear



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 20:17:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Lear/pseuds/Kate_Lear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet morning in 221B, and a book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Idiosyncratic Lodger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [innie_darling (innie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/gifts).



> Thanks to fengirl88 for speedy beta-ing! This fic is for innie-darling, with many thanks for putting me up during my recent visit to NYC and in hopes that I was a better house-guest than the character in this story...

The morning after they solve the Lord St Simon case, John’s searching hand encounters only empty, tumbled sheets on the other side of their bed. Sherlock has already arisen, which comes as no surprise: the case had been so simple that he’d not had time to accumulate the levels of sleep deprivation that led to him passing out for twelve hours straight and then waking soft and sleepy-pliant against John.

Instead the case had been just enough to whet Sherlock’s appetite, like a tantalising entrée without anything more substantial to follow it, and John sits up and swings his legs out of bed while hoping futilely that Sherlock’s website will provide something for him to really sink his teeth into.

Out in the kitchen, John finds that Sherlock has flung on his second-favourite dressing-gown over his pyjamas and is sitting at the kitchen table on a tall lab stool that he filched from God knows where, hunched over his work like a bird of prey. He’s frowning at what he’s doing and doesn’t acknowledge John when he enters the kitchen, but John’s offer of tea is met with a distracted ‘Please.’

John sets the mug down within Sherlock’s reach but at a careful distance from the light box and microscope, and before he can take his own tea and toast into their sitting room a long arm snakes out and grabs a fistful of John’s dressing gown, drawing him close.

‘Morning,’ Sherlock rumbles, winding his arm around John’s waist and pulling John to lean against him.

‘Morning yourself.’ John looks down at what Sherlock’s doing: he’s surrounded by prepared specimen slides with unhelpful notes like ‘25 y.o; NS’ and ‘50 y.o.; BPA’ on them in neat, angular writing. ‘Going well?’

‘Mmm.’ Sherlock pokes dispiritedly at the slides with a long finger. ‘I’d rather have a case.’

‘Yeah.’ John rests his lips against Sherlock’s temple – with Sherlock seated like this they’re the same height – and Sherlock turns his head for a proper kiss, which John gives to him readily.

It’s brief and shallow, more for comfort than desire, and John licks his lips thoughtfully when Sherlock pulls away. ‘I see Lestrade’s changed his tune; last night he was adamant that we’d have to come into the station today to give our statements. Obviously he’s decided it can wait until tomorrow.’

Sherlock looks briefly surprised before his face clears. ‘Yes. He’s texted you, then.’

‘No.’ John grins at him, savouring the moment, before elaborating: ‘You’ve brushed your teeth. I know you, you see. I know how fastidious you are when it comes to your personal habits: as soon as you get up then you brush your teeth and, if you’re planning on leaving the house that day, you shower, even if you’re putting your pyjamas back on and not going out until much later in the day. You’ve brushed your teeth but not showered–’ John tugs affectionately at Sherlock’s bed-tousled hair ‘– so you’re not planning on leaving the flat, therefore Lestrade must have told you not to bother coming in today after all. However the case was important enough – and he was insistent enough last night – that he won’t want to delay too long in case you get absorbed in something else, so he wants us tomorrow. QED.’

‘John.’ Sherlock looks gratifyingly pole-axed. ‘That was… good. _Very_ good, in fact. You–’

‘Yes, well, I live with you, I’ve picked up a trick or two.’ John presses another kiss to the corner of Sherlock’s mouth before stepping back, and Sherlock lets him go.

‘I can’t tempt you to the theatre later?’ John says, picking up his tea and toast. ‘There’s a new play just opened, a murder mystery; if you correctly identify the murderer before the interval then I’ll buy you dinner afterwards. Writing the name down on a bit of paper and sticking it in an envelope, mind, none of this whispering it straight into my ear. Some of us like to wait for the proper reveal at the end.’

‘Alright,’ Sherlock says vaguely, his attention sliding back to his work.

‘Tell me five things about each of the actors, and I’ll throw in dessert as well.’

‘Mmm.’ Sherlock is peering down the microscope again and John lets him go, taking his breakfast into the sitting room and sitting at the table to flick through the morning’s papers. Sherlock has already been through them in search of a case and abandoned them in disgust, as evinced by the careless fashion they’re strewn across the table, and John twitches the pages of the _Guardian_ back into order and starts to read.

A quiet day in the flat isn’t the end of the world, despite what Sherlock may think; John needs to type up the case notes from the previous day’s case – it still amuses him that Sherlock has all but abandoned his own system in favour of referring to John’s – and their lives are busy enough that these peaceful interludes are something to be savoured.

John finishes breakfast and leaves his plate and cup by the sink before coming back out to the sitting room. He might as well type up the case notes now, while they’re fresh in his mind, but Sherlock has tucked his laptop out of the way on the bookcase (John has given up trying to think of passwords that Sherlock can’t crack) and blocking the path is a box of books.

They were for a case several weeks ago, and ever since it was solved both he and Sherlock have got into the habit of stepping around the box in lieu of actually _doing something about it_ ; for someone whose personal habits and bedroom are so neat then Sherlock can be a dreadful hoarder. But John has no plans for the day and he calls ‘I’m going to give these books to the charity shop down the road. Are you done with them?’

There’s a vague noise from the kitchen that John decides to take as a yes – Sherlock is quick enough to protest when it looks like John is about to interfere with an ongoing experiment – and so he sits in his chair and drags the box closer to him to quickly check through the contents.

John still can’t show his face in the local branch of Oxfam after the time he inadvertently handed over an old shoebox that turned out not to contain a pair of nearly-new shoes that he never wore, but a selection of fur-lined handcuffs that were the subject of a study of different chafe marks. Ever since then he vowed to thoroughly check anything that left their flat; it wouldn’t be at all surprising for the stack of books to contain something wildly inappropriate, and he’s started to quite like the little old ladies who run the Cancer Research UK charity shop around the corner.

The box contains no unpleasant surprises, however, apart from the terrible writing that can be found in cheap paperback thrillers everywhere, and John goes through it quickly. He sets aside a few books from favourite authors that he’s not yet read, and the rest he stacks neatly on the floor next to his feet. He’s almost at the bottom of the box when a flash of bright yellow catches his eye – incongruous along all the darker, more serious covers, and the swooning women being clutched by men with their shirts half-undone – and he pulls it out.

The cover is a simple yellow and white with a pen-and-ink drawing of a doleful-looking little creature on it, its striped scarf caught permanently a-flutter in an invisible breeze. It’s an Edward Gorey book, and John smiles to himself as he flips it open. An aunt had had several of his books and John remembers them vaguely from occasional visits to her; he’d always loved the slightly dark humour of them.

He turns the pages slowly, reading the rhyming couplets and looking at the sombre ink sketches of the people in their stiff Edwardian clothing. On every page there’s the little creature-person also, long-nosed and pear-shaped and slightly woebegone, padding about in its little white tennis shoes. He reads partway through, half his attention on the book and half on Sherlock muttering observations to himself, before his brain puts the two together and amusement tugs at the corners of his mouth.

He doesn’t realise he’s made any sound until Sherlock stirs restlessly at the table.

‘What are you laughing at?’ Sherlock is still looking down his microscope but John’s got better at reading him and he can feel Sherlock’s attention honing in on him like a shift in gravity. ‘Something’s amusing you.’

‘Nothing.’ John covers his mouth and chin with his hand and pulls it down hard, trying to smooth the laughter out of himself by force of will. ‘It’s nothing, just something that made me smile.’

Sherlock may complain about other people thinking too noisily, but when he puts his mind to it then he has one of the _loudest_ silences John has ever heard.

‘Oh fine.’ John doesn’t try very hard to deflect Sherlock’s attention: he used to think that all Sherlock’s experiments were of equal importance – or equal madness, at times the dividing line seemed all too narrow – but now he increasingly recognises the difference between ‘Do not disturb, working,’ and ‘Wants to be distracted with something interesting.’

‘It’s a book I remember reading when I was a kid.’

Sherlock grunts disinterestedly. ‘Nursery stories.’

‘Not exactly.’ John clears his throat slightly, riffles back to the first page, and reads: ‘“When they answered the door on that wild winter night, there was no-one expected – and no-one in sight.”’

He turns the page and adds: ‘“Then they saw something standing on top of an urn, whose peculiar appearance gave them quite a turn.”’

‘And?’ Sherlock stirs restlessly on his stool, frowns briefly at John. ‘I’m not seeing the entertainment value.’

‘It’s just a story about a family who have an unexpected guest with some odd habits,’ John says, innocent as the driven snow. ‘Reminded me a bit of someone I know.’

Sherlock’s attention has returned to his microscope; he must have seen something interesting because it takes a few seconds for him to look back up at John.

‘You mean me.’

‘Yes.’ John grins at him, skips several pages further on, and reads: ‘“Every Sunday it brooded and lay on the floor, inconveniently close to the drawing-room door.”’

‘I don’t _brood_.’ Sherlock’s attention is back on his experiment but his reply is quick, his tone is desert-dry. ‘I _reflect_. Surely you’ve heard of the concept.’

John doesn’t respond to this, but flips back a few pages and says: ‘“It was seemingly deaf to whatever they said, so at last they stopped screaming and went off to bed.”’

Sherlock doesn’t reply to this, to all appearances just as deaf as the book character and John says: ‘“It joined them for breakfast and presently ate all the syrup and toast, and part of a plate.” And don’t forget that I’ve _seen_ how you eat after a case, by the way. It’s like a Biblical plague.’

‘It’s logical to stock up on resources during a time of plenty to see you through times of scarcity,’ Sherlock mutters tetchily, writing something on the notepad at his elbow.

‘There don’t have to _be_ times of scarcity,’ John counters, but that’s an old argument between them, the edges worn soft with repetition, and he turns a page. ‘“It was subject to fits of bewildering wrath, during which it would hide all the towels from the bath.”’

Sherlock lifts his head to fix him with a glare. ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

John can’t contain a laugh. ‘Sherlock, your fits of bewildering wrath are _legendary_ at NSY. And what about “It betrayed a great liking for peering up flues, and for peeling the soles of its white canvas shoes”? Those boots of mine still aren’t the same after that impromptu trek through the sewers. And why we had to do it then and there, and not go and change into proper kit–’

‘The evidence would have washed away,’ Sherlock says, apparently able to take observational notes on one thing while having a conversation about something entirely different.

John entertains himself reading a few more of the couplets aloud, casting none-too-subtle glances at the homely chaos of their flat, and Sherlock grumbles variations on a theme of ‘Bugger off,’ and ‘You realise these results may be lost to posterity because of such _fascinating_ reflections,’ while he shifts on his perch until he resembles nothing so much as a ruffled pigeon.

John knows very well that Sherlock is a grown man and eminently capable of telling friendly leg-pulling from more barbed jabs, and so he only smiles when Sherlock glowers darkly at him from under heavy brows. He does relent, though.

‘I’ve not even got to the best one yet.’ John flips to the end of the book. ‘Do you want to hear it?’

Sherlock’s voice is sweet as lead acetate. ‘Do tell.’

‘“It came seventeen years ago and – to this day – it has shown no intention of going away.”’

‘Ridiculous nonsense,’ Sherlock mutters, looking back down the microscope and adjusting the focus, and John only grins affectionately as he puts the book in the stack for the charity shop.

All in all there’s nothing to distinguish the conversation from countless other times when John has wound Sherlock up about his clothes, or habits, or his myriad ongoing experiments, and that usually elicit dryly sarcastic retorts about John’s height or fashion sense (that even John has to admit are funny; Sherlock’s sense of humour is deeply buried but witty).

But John comes back downstairs half an hour later, dressed and ready to take the books down to the charity shop, and spies _The Doubtful Guest_ tucked into a vacant space on their bookshelf instead of in the box of books where he left it. Sherlock is still engrossed in his study, to all appearances deaf and blind to anything happening at less than 50x magnification, and John quirks a smile and leaves the book where it is.

It’s an odd sort of living arrangement but it’s his, and John wouldn’t change it for the world. So the following week, when John turns off the shower and his wet, groping hand encounters an empty hook where his towel should be, he only laughs instead of getting annoyed, and steals Sherlock’s instead.

\--End--


End file.
